Monday, July 10, 2006

TV vs Film

Markposted briefly a few days ago about finding TV more compelling than movies lately. I don't know whether I agree or not, but it something I've thought about (especially as a film buff who only a few years overcame a prejudiced and condescending view of television), and his post made the wheels of my mind start turning on the subject again.

I tried to come up with a cohesive essay-type thing with a thesis and everything, but it didn't work...it's too large a topic with too many variables and exceptions to deal with so quickly and with so little thought. So here's just some observations. Make of them what you will.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Power hungry

I never think about how dependent I am on electricity until I’m without it. Should’ve known when the traffic lights on Carmen Rd were out that my electricity would be as well. So that eliminated my plan to knock another movie off my 2006 goal list. Also my plan to work on a couple of posts I’ve been writing on and off for the last few days. And my plan to fix some formatting on the Wordpress blog. On the plus side, my computer still had an hour so left of battery power in it, so even though I wasn’t able to get to the internet (because the modem and router both need power), I was able to try out the Microsoft ebook reader software I downloaded a couple of days ago and practice making annotations and stuff.

So then I got hungry. Except I have nothing in my apartment to eat that doesn’t need to be cooked (and by “cooked” I mean “put in the oven e.g. frozen pizza” because I don’t cook), microwaved, toasted, or boiled–all of which require electricity. No, I don’t have bread or cereal or chips, even. I finally found some year-old Girl Scout cookies.

Granted, I could’ve gone out somewhere and found light and food, and I very nearly did, but then I couldn’t be complaining, now could I? Also, I think Barnes & Noble closes early on Sundays, and I’m trying to wean myself off of fast food, and I wanted to get in bed relatively early, which is the one thing that power outages are good for. But eight o’clock was just a little earlier than I was hoping.

Let’s also mention the part where I don’t have a working flashlight. I do have some candles, which I save for occasions such as this. But let me tell you, candles aren’t really all they’re cracked up to be. Sure, they’re fine for the ambient light that gets you to the bathroom when the lights are out. But I don’t know how people didn’t go blind by the age of twenty back before they invented light bulbs. I suppose they didn’t stay up all night and planned their day more by the sun, but still. I wrote this out by candlelight in my notebook, but my notebook has unusually white pages (Moleskines are the best ever), and writing doesn’t require as much visual accuity as reading. As evidenced by the notes I took during Pirates of the Caribbean yesterday. Of course, those aren’t readable. But whatever. I tried to read, and made it through a sentence before I gave up.

Good thing my cellphone was mostly charged up and has an alarm. I need to be up earlier than usual tomorrow, and my clock? Electric and digital, no batteries. But the cellphone alarm has no snooze button. ;)

But on the really good side? The power came back on at 10pm sharp. Almost makes me wonder if they did it on purpose. And of course I was halfway asleep by then. And of course in the process of testing the lights, I’d left the one in the bedroom in the “on” position. So, yeah, wide awake now, so I decided to go ahead and post this, in the fear that my candle-lit handwriting wouldn’t be readable once I was a good night’s sleep away from remembering what I wrote.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Pictures!

Please update links for my new blog at www.the-frame.com/blog. I'll try to remember to cross post for a while, but I can't guarantee it. Not to mention, you'll want to check out the cool music player I just embedded in the sidebar over there.

We're back from Florida! Here's some photos from our trip (click the picture to go to the appropriate flickr photoset). First a bunch of pictures of the beach, including some showing the restoration efforts still going on since Hurricane Ivan flattened the place.And then a bunch more of my adorable cousins (well, technically, their dad is my cousin...I forget how the relationship details go). My cousin and his wife are from Pensacola, but they moved to Georgia a couple of years ago, so their girls aren't acclimated to the beach and we had to drag them into the water. In this picture, the one on the left is Michaela, the oldest at four and a half. The two on the right, Ema and Ana, are three-year-old twins. And if you click through, you can see a few shots of baby brother Micah and mommy Beth. My hat's off to her for doing an amazing job raising four kids under five. And they're all incredible hams. Just sayin'.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

In which I PWN MySQL and php

Okay, not so much pwn as finally got to do what I wanted. After my rant a few days ago about not being able to find a blogging platform I really liked and/or get Wordpress to install on my own webspace so I could use it, I calmed down and started working through the tutorials and searching help forums, and lo and behold if I didn't get it to work. So now I have a blog hosted on my own site, powered by Wordpress (which I like better than Blogger, so far), so I'm moving over there.

New blog is at http://www.the-frame.com/blog. (The Frame is my film website...let's just hope the blog gets updated more frequently than the rest of it...)

I was able to port all my posts and comments from here over to there, but I haven't completely gotten everything looking the way I want it. Please let me know if anything looks broken in your browsers.

However, I am writing this from a hotel on the way to Florida, and while most every hotel has wireless internet now, I'm not sure if the condo we're renting will have any sort of internet, so I may not be around for the next week at all. We'll see.

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About Me

Cinephile, music lover, internet junkie, gamer, and recovering academic
(English Lit).
Currently I live in Los Angeles. I moved here for the low cost of
living. Somehow that is not working out so well. Actually, I moved here
to be in a big city with plenty of stuff to do. I needed lots of film
stuff, lots of music stuff, and lots of warm, preferably dry, weather.
LA met all the criteria, and so far I still completely love being here.

I produce internal publications and videos (information, training, human interest) for staff and faculty of the University of Southern California. This is fun on its own, but also gives me much-desired access to university resources and libraries.

On my own time, I also write for film blog Row Three and my own mostly film-related blog The Frame. And I volunteer at one Los Angeles's best repertory cinemas, Cinefamily. Throw in video gaming, movie watching, and the wonderous LA commute, and I stay pretty busy.

Do not proposition me. I am not here for dating, chatting, or anything along those lines. Doing this will earn you an instant block.

Also, if I don't know you and you make off-topic comments (especially things to the effect of "hey, you pretty, add me back"), I will likely delete your comments. Get to know me first through interacting with the content I post.